Georgia O'Keeffe used charcoal for the abstract drawings Alfred Stieglitz exhibited in 1916. Those works helped introduce her distinctive visual language to New York's modern-art circles.
The drawings were made in a reduced palette of black and white, allowing O'Keeffe to explore line, shape, rhythm, and movement without depending on recognizable subject matter. Their abstraction was unusual in American art at the time, particularly because the works were created by a woman who had not yet become widely known.
O'Keeffe mailed the drawings to Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Stieglitz. He exhibited them at his 291 gallery, where they attracted attention and led to a lasting relationship between the artist and the dealer.
These drawings are important because they predate O'Keeffe's best-known enlarged flower paintings. Her later work used oil, watercolor, pastel, and other media, but the 1916 breakthrough was specifically associated with charcoal abstraction. The medium was not incidental: its direct, spare marks suited her experiments with purely visual form.